


One Blood

by zeldadestry



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: 100_women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-11
Updated: 2006-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:32:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andromeda misses her sisters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 016, “Love”, for 100_women fanfic challenge  
> written before the release of book 7, so doesn't take its info into account

Anna Karenina. Too obvious, she knows. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Andromeda keeps two letters pressed between the pages of the heavy novel.

My dear, my dearest, you are mine. We three share this blood and you can run and run and run and hide and hide and hide and you can change your name a million times and it will make NO difference. Marry a million Mudbloods, bear a million unclean brats, and in the end your face is mine, your hands are mine. Try as you may to pollute yourself, degrade your self, you can not dilute our purity. The blood in your veins remains, same as mine, same as hers. We share everything. We share everything, but I have always been strongest, the victor in all struggles. You know the truth of this. I own you. You belong to me. Spill your blood, spill my own, the result is the same. We all fall down.

There is no signature, only a puddle of reddish brown that stains the bottom of the paper. Bellatrix has always been strangely literal. If she writes of blood, she must cut herself and smear the embodiment of the word across the parchment.

This has been a most trying time. I have wondered often how you are, if perhaps we might be able to meet. I wish for it, but I know it can not be. It is too dangerous, and even if it were not, why would you see me now after years when I have refused to see you, ignored you, tried to pretend you did not exist? No, you have too much pride to return now. I don’t blame you. I know I have been unfair. I know our estrangement is by my own doing, is my own fault. Keep this letter, my sister. Yes, I call you my sister, you have always been so and each time I denied you, my heart grew heavier. Keep this letter, and with it, one happy memory from when we were girls. I have mine. It was hard to find, but I kept looking, sifting through the debris of our childhood, muddying my hands until I found the vein of gold. If I can believe that there is one part and particle of you, however small, that still carries tenderness for me, I will not find my misery so difficult to endure.

The edge of this letter is gilded in silver, embossed with the Slytherin green of the Malfoy family crest. Some of the ink is smeared, as though perhaps Narcissa wept as she composed it.

When she reads the letters, she permits herself the indulgence of imagining a different fate. No, perhaps they were never meant to be happy, not in this world, nor in any other. If only they could face their sorrows together.

Yes, she would rather have them with her on this side, fighting against Voldemort. Of course that is what she would prefer. But she is alone in the house as the gray afternoon drags towards dusk and she wonders if, in these last days, it would be better to stand together, no matter their allegiance.

If they survive the final confrontation, she will welcome the reunion. She will forgive and she will forget and she will look forward to creating a new unhappiness, one that is shared.  



End file.
